Scripting the Perpetrating Self: Masculinity, Class and Violence in German Post-terrorist Autobiography

Abstract

Bielby examines Michael Baumann’s post-terrorist memoir Wie alles anfing (How it all began), which achieved international notoriety in the 1970s after it was seized by police in a crackdown on freedom of speech as the Federal Republic of Germany struggled to contain its terrorist threat. The text is the first and most famous example of what now constitutes a sizeable corpus of German post-terrorist life writing. Bielby explores the text as a case study for a ‘critical feminist perpetrator studies.’ Embracing interdisciplinarity, she combines methodologies from area studies and criminology with a feminist theoretical framework. She brings an intersectional gendered approach to the study of male perpetration, problematising the idea of what counts as political violence and agency from a feminist perspective.